Manchester City head to Old Trafford for the first Manchester derby of the 2026\/27 season on Sunday, and their injury picture has become clearer ahead of the meeting.<\/p>\n
There had been real concern that Nico O\u2019Reilly might not make the trip after a fitness doubt, but the left back has now been passed fit. That is a major lift for City as they prepare for one of the standout fixtures of the campaign.<\/p>\n
The one confirmed absentee is Jeremy Doku. The Belgian winger remains unavailable as he continues to recover from a calf injury, leaving City without one of their most direct wide options.<\/p>\n
Doku has not featured since picking up the problem in August\u2019s Community Shield defeat to Arsenal, and he is still short of a return. Addressing the situation before the derby, Maresca said: \u201cJ\u00e9r\u00e9my, I think he needs some more days,\u201d. That assessment leaves no doubt that the winger will need further time before he can rejoin the squad.<\/p>\n
His absence matters for City because of what he produced last season. Doku delivered the strongest campaign of his City career, finishing with eight goals and 14 assists. Two of those assists came against United, as City recorded a 3-0 win over the Red Devils in their first Premier League meeting of the season.<\/p>\n
With O\u2019Reilly available again and Doku ruled out, City go into the derby with only one enforced change in their injury list, but it is still a significant one given the impact the winger made over the previous campaign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
City have O\u2019Reilly back for Old Trafford, but Doku remains out after calf injury setback.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19372,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[238,179],"tags":[1754,242,180],"class_list":["post-19373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-city","category-manchester-united","tag-2026-27-fixtures","tag-injury","tag-player-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}